Board gives money to recreation district

The Plumas County Board of Supervisors set aside money for recreation districts in the 2013-14 budget and Indian Valley was the first to take advantage of it.

Indian Valley Recreation and Parks District received $3,000 to offset this winter’s heating costs, as well as to help mitigate a problem with snow between two of its buildings.

The supervisors allocated the money during their Oct. 11 meeting, following a presentation by Matt Cerney, who serves on the recreation district’s board of directors.

“We are doing really good things in Indian Valley,” Cerney said of the district.

Supervisor Kevin Goss, who represents Indian Valley, agreed. “It’s a pretty amazing thing to have,” he said, and praised the organization’s teen program.

Cerney gave the board a brief history of the district, which formed as a nonprofit in 1965, and talked about his own experience since moving to the area seven years ago.

“I used to drive by an empty shell of a building,” Cerney said of what is now the completed Indian Valley Community Center.

The center hosts classes and programs created by the district, but is also a popular meeting place for other agencies and is available to rent as well.

The center includes two buildings, a patio and gardens.

Cerney presented a written proposal to the supervisors that focused on the need to help with heating the facility, but then verbally discussed a serious issue of snow sliding off the buildings’ roofs onto a walkway that separates the two.

District directors feared that someone could be injured while walking between the two buildings.

The supervisors earmarked $9,000 in the 2013-14 contingency fund to give $3,000 each to the recreation districts in Indian Valley, Eastern Plumas and Lake Almanor. The recreation district in Quincy already receives an allocation to run the county’s skate park.

But before the supervisors officially signed over the money, they wanted to hear a presentation from each of the recreation districts about how the money would be spent.

The other two districts have not presented formal requests to the board yet.